Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Some 10m fun on a Sunday morning

Out with the beam once againLast week Marcel PD7YY - a 10 metre enthusiast like me - put the high SFI to my attention. When I then read the Tony 10 metre report mentioning a short 10m contest on Sunday morning I started building support with the station manager for a few hours off on Sunday morning. I was successful and went out with a whole collection of radio stuff to an empty parking lot in Arnhem, just 10 minutes from where I live.It was from this spot that I was active in CQWW last year. The good thing about the location is that it is completely desolate in the weekends and has a clear path to all directions (from a 15 degrees take off angle point of view).

PH0NO/P portable, beaming VK short path

I had some difficulty getting my alu mast up as there was ice between the different segments (it was kind of cold that day). In the end I managed to set up my 4 element beam again at about 12m (40 ft) high.

This time I brought a small amplifier I bought recently through ebay. It should be capable of putting out 400w PEP but I could not get it past 250w. This increase from the 100w the radio can provide is probably not worth the hassle of bringing an extra car battery.The DARC contest did bring quite a bit of activity on 10m. Unfortunately there was not a lot of DX amongst the stations I heard. Not surprisingly I did copy a lot of DL stations...I handed out a couple of points and managed to contact R9, 9W2 and three VKs (VK3 and VK4). VK3XPT commented that I was the strongest station on the band. Now that is a first.. Of course it might have helped that all beams were pointing towards DL in stead of VK.

Even taking into account the amount of time to set up and break down the station (about half of the total time I was out) it was a morning well spent.

In the mean time the world has turned white over here. The layer of snow will probably spoil my weekly DX /P activity on Wednesday morning. Glad I took my shot of DX on Sunday.